2014 Directed by Nick Szostakiwskyj
A group of archaeologists uncover a strange structure in Northern Canada, dating over ten thousand years before the present. The team finds themselves isolated when their communication systems fail and it's not long before they begin to feel the effects of the solitude.
Black Mountain, Black Mountain Side - Das Ding aus dem Eis
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Good evening and welcome fellow Children of Chaos.
I fucking loved this one, its like a poor man's The Thing. That isn't an insult. A group of researchers find a strange structure in the north of Canada and call in a professor to investigate. Suddenly a bunch of workers wander off and they are left with no way to drive anywhere and the radio is out.
What comes next is a story of isolation, paranoia, and a mysterious X factor that causes the whole thing to go crazygonuts.
I also loved how the movie toys with the reality of the X-factor. Is it in their heads? Is the mysterious change real or just another hallucination?
I could have done without…
A week ago I was back in our old neighborhood having drinks in our friend Melissa’s yard. Some time after ten Melissa stood up, moved a couple of paces, looked skywards toward the crown of a cottonwood and said, matter-of-factly,
The owls are back.
Then Alison, who had arrived barefooted and gone back to her house for shoes and returned, craned her neck too, and said,
Yes, looks like it.
Owls are notorious suburban spirit animals, and naturally, not seeing or hearing the owl myself, I concluded that my old neighborhood was in the grip of a nature cult. I’ve had my own encounters with urban familiars, once when for a year I was shadowed by horses on my way…
Unrated - 1 Hour 39 Minutes
Mystery - Thriller - Horror - Fantasy - Dark
Directed by Nick Szostakiwskyj
Starring Shane Twerdun, Michael Dickson, Carl Toftfelt
Archaeologists have made the discovery of a lifetime when they uncovered a strange structure that is believed to be thousands of years old. The team begins to lose ties to the outside world one by one, compounding the effects of complete and utter isolation in an unforgiving frozen wilderness!
Nick Szostakiwskyj direction, pacing and striptease-esque reveal of the naughty bits that we horror mongers are just aching to wave our crisp dollar bills in the air for, hoping for a lingering glimpse, a clue so fetching we can barely contain ourselves! But ohhhhhhhhhh what…
Black Mountain Side is the second work of this director, who also dares with the script to develop this story that deals with the theme of the human mind in the face of isolation mixed with Science Fiction, obviously with dark elements in between.
A group of archaeologists settled in the northern lands of Canada will make a discovery that may change the course of humanity forever: some unknown ruins more than ten thousand years old. It is now up to the team to decide how to communicate such a discovery, but they will soon realize that they are completely isolated in the middle of nowhere and something strange seems to be haunting the whole team.
This is the starting…
Can we talk about that deer?
The first time I saw it, I thought, “Well, that’s kinda creepy.”
The second time, it was a lot closer and I thought, “Ah geez, is that the best they could do?!”
Then a character started hallucinating and tells his buddy that the bipedal deer thing is standing behind him and touching him. This made me feel uncomfortable and I thought, “If that fake-looking deer pops up behind him, I can’t say for sure whether I’ll crack up or shit myself.”
It was at this point that the deer began to take on a sort of Lynchian, there’s-something-not-quite-right-about-this quality, like those goddamn rabbit people from Inland Empire. I thought, “I’m not sure that I…
Interesting psychological horror about a group of archaeologists who discover what appears to be an ancient structure buried in the snow towards the arctic circle.
What plays out is a dark thriller as the group face fears of isolation and strange physical mutations in a film thick with supernatural undercurrents.
I rather enjoyed this. It takes a bit of Carpenter's The Thing in addition to Larry Fessenden's The Last Winter and throws in what might be a dose of Lovecraft lite, in a beautifully photographed, nicely acted slow burning chiller.
What i did find utterly bizarre were the end credits. I wasn't paying attention as the cast list rolled so slowly 'rewound' the disc. The film's title Black Mountain appeared followed by a second title Black Mountain Side. On playback Black Mountain Side is nowhere to be seen. The credits simply say Black Mountain, then the cast list rolls.
A haunted dvd for sure. And a movie with rewatch value.
Nick Szostakiwskyj's horror-thriller Black Mountain Side features an all-male cast of archaeologists becoming stark staring mad following the finding of an ancient shrine in the wintry mountains of British Colombia. In its best light, the film can be viewed as a love letter to John Carpenter's The Thing as it shares many aspects of that 1982 film, not least of all being the archaeologists being relatively unprepared from the start, even though they're supposed to be.
The snowbound psychological brain bender perches on a wire between the arising turmoil resulting from solitude or some external force affecting them because of the unearthed structure, even offering up a somewhat Lovecraftian rationale involving ancient bacteria and a cult of self-mutilation. With doom…
This really was just a slower paced The Thing with a smaller budget. Quite creepy and the escalation of events was pretty well done, but the reluctance to explain too much of the threat and a ridiculously abrupt ending left a slightly sour taste. Fans of Carpenter and probably Lovecraft should get their fix, just don't expect anything incredible.
While it isn't quite The Thing, Black Mountain Side is a bleak, harrowing piece of Lovecraftian horror, entrenched in isolation, paranoia, and existential dread, seasoned with body horror and tastefully executed creature effects. I'm a real sucker for the setting and creepy deer imagery, so this was just a match made in heaven. There is a bit of stiffness in some of the acting, not particularly that it's bad, but there are some limitations considering the budget and everything. The final conversation is perhaps a bit overdone as well, but I still think it comes together beautifully. I had a chance to see this a little early way back when it was coming out, but didn't make time for it. I was a fool.
🧡 = Technical Merit (Direction | Writing | Acting | Production Design & Art Direction | Sound)
🧡 = Artistic Vision (Mood & Atmosphere)
🧡 = Personal Affect (Influence or Change in Perspective)
It's really hard to write anything about Black Mountain Side without referencing that other thing. You know?
You know the thing I'm talking about. That thing. Hard not to draw comparisons to it... The thing that also takes place in a remote, frozen hellscape where a thing is unearthed and a crew of archaeologists trapped for a maddeningly long period of time in a dingy outpost cut off from civilization begin to lose their minds after the foreign entity/thing infiltrates their compound, exacerbating their struggle against the elements and…
Low budget Canadian horror movie that wants so badly to be either Stephen King's Dreamcatcher or John Carpenter's The Thing.
Not super-original but it did manage to still surprise and unsettle me. It has what I like to call, The Creepfactor, it gets under your skin.
Great for fans of isolation-horror.
